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As the UK's pensions industry gathered in Manchester for its annual conference from 14-16 October, the delegates were given reason to hope they might have a pause to catch their breath following the breakneck pace of regulatory change in recent years.

Micha Theiner

The Conservative government's new pensions minister, Ros Altmann, in one of her first public appearances since being appointed, announced some delays to parts of its reform agenda - such as the "pot follows member" admin system meant to consolidate millions of small savers' stranded pension pots, and the drive to create new collective defined ambition schemes.

But the prospect of further radical reform hovered in the background, with the UK Treasury due to pronounce upon proposals that could turn pensions entirely on their heads, by taxing them like retail savings accounts, in a matter of weeks.

Altmann said her department, the Department for Work and Pensions, had been in discussions with the Treasury about the proposal, but offered few clues as to the outcome.

Joanne Segars, its chief executive, said: "The lines are blurring between work and retirement, between pensions and other forms of saving and between scheme and saver responsibility… our new identity allows us to share our knowledge and expertise directly and readily with more schemes and more savers."

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Some had mixed feelings about the rebrand. Tom McPhail, the pensions commentator at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "it looks like an unashamed land-grab as the NAPF bids to establish themselves as the pre-eminent voice for the retirement and savings industry".

But he also echoed Segars' sentiment, saying the rebrand was "symptomatic of the blurring of the boundaries between pensions and other savings arrangements, in the retirement planning landscape".

McPhail added: "The financial services industry’s trade bodies seem to be suffering a collective crisis of identity as they all try to reassert their relevance in a very fast changing world. This announcement also comes hard on the heels of Dan Godfrey’s defenestration from the Investment Association and the departure of L&G and Aegon from the ABI."

Godfrey's exit from the Investment Association also provoked conference chatter, thanks to his high-profile advocacy of transparency over the fees that fund managers charge - and which pension funds pay.

Andy Cheseldine, a principal at pensions consultancy Lane Clark and Peacock, said: "I think the fund managers have shot themselves in the foot on this. I don't know what took place in that boardroom - I wasn't there - but it just looks bad, not only to the public, but possibly regulators. They have exposed themselves to the possibility of harsher regulation in future."

Transparency

Transparency was one of the key themes of the conference, emerging at panel discussions as diverse as how pension schemes can integrate alternative investments into their schemes to how pension funds' default investment strategies can be assessed for value for money.

Tim Banks, managing director at the pension strategies group at asset manager AB, said when it came to defining value for money it was important that trustees and pension schemes understood not just the headline prices charged for default funds but also how much was spent on each element.

Elsewhere, at a panel discussion on alternative investments, representatives from the hedge fund and private equity industry were confronted with the reality that most attendees still thought they were not transparent enough.

Some larger pension funds in Europe have responded to dissatisfaction with private equity managers by setting up in-house teams to do "co investment" deals - investing alongside private equity firms, but not paying their management and performance fees.

But support for this approach is not universal. Neil Cooper, a private equity portfolio manager at the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, told one session on private-equity investment: "Trying to create an internal co-investment resource is quite difficult.

"Co-investment [by pension funds] has grown significantly during the past five to seven years, which has been a very good period in terms of market valuations - so people are feeling good about themselves. But you need to assess this over the course of the economic cycle, if not multiple economic cycles. Whilst a lot of people are pleased with their co-investment programmes, it's probably too early to tell."

The Greater Manchester fund has a large private equity investment programme, but invests entirely through private equity managers' funds.

Future challenges

In other sessions, delegates took stock of how the government's "pension freedoms" reforms were progressing, six months on from their introduction. Speakers gave tips on how to communicate with savers about the changes.

And the conference also featured more than one sober reminder of the scale of the challenge facing the savings industry, as the population ages, and the country's wealth distribution shifts.

William Hague, the former foreign secretary, now Lord Hague of Richmond, told delegates that Britain's young people had become a "squeezed generation".

Hague said that young people today would not enjoy the better pensions and inflated house prices their parents currently enjoy. "There is no easy answer," he said of the challenges this posed to pension schemes and the wider society.

This was echoed in a session organised by the consultancy Redington, where co-chief executive Rob Gardner warned: "More and more personal responsibility has shifted on to us as individuals and this especially affects millennials [people born after 1994].

"This comes at a time when the saving ratio is at an all-time low and financial education is also at an all-time low. I strongly believe that 30 years from now we will have a pension crisis. We do need to take action."